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Sunday, March 16, 2014

The Patience Stone: a film review

You may view this film with an almost salacious glee if you have been in an abusive marriage where your thoughts and your voice were throttled by fear.

THE PATIENCE STONE will be your cinematic wet
dream.

The setting for the action is a nameless city in a nameless
land. There is a civil war between
various militias. Crazed men armed with
assault rifles and rocket launchers careen through the blasted city in pickup
trucks. At night the tracers whizz and
ricochet.

The character called The Woman lives in a ruin of a house
with her wounded, paralyzed husband.
She has sent her two children to her aunt's house. Her husband can't talk, he can't even blink,
but he is alive. The "doctors" say that the he might recover in two
weeks, but the bullet hole in his neck isn't healing. All The Woman can do is refill his IV drip, keep him hydrated,
wash him and talk to him. The Woman
realizes, while talking, that she can say anything she wants. She can speak the unspeakable. She can speak truth. She can tell her husband what an asshole
he's been, treating her like dirt.
"The night we were married you were on me like an animal. Then you were finished, just like
that." She mocks him, and by
extension the males who share his culture. They're all premature ejaculators. "You've been excited so long you can't
even get it out of your pants."

Her husband becomes her Patience Stone, a legendary object
into which you can pour all your pain.
When the stone has taken all of your suffering it falls to pieces and you are at
last free of everything that has afflicted your spirit. The Woman protects her husband, hides him
from enemy militia fighters and builds a place of concealment in a closet. Every time she leaves the house she says
"Go to Hell!" or "Fuck You!" If she had said these things in the old days her husband would have killed
her instantly, without legal consequences.

As she drains her contempt and hostility into her personal
Patience Stone a militia commander breaks into her house, searching for his
enemies. He is accompanied by a young
soldier with a pronounced stutter. The Husband is hidden. The commander is thinking about rape until
The Woman tells him

she's a
prostitute. He thinks about killing her
on the spot but he's busy with war. He
leaves after spitting on The Woman.

Later the young man with the stutter returns and offers The
Woman money for sex. He can't be put
off, his excitement is too great. He topples
on her prone body and ejaculates before he can get his pants off. The Woman is upset but she's also
amused. There's something touching
about this handsome orphan who can barely speak. "Was this your first time?" she asks. He nods.

The Woman continues her one sided conversation with her
staring husband. Her pain, her rage,
her bitterness come pouring forth.
"Fuck you," she tells him each time she leaves to fetch
supplies. "Go to Hell!"

At this point I can say no more lest I enter spoiler
territory. This film is a profound
indictment of patriarchal cultures everywhere.
I was privileged to see THE PATIENCE STONE with a friend who had suffered
under such a system. I could feel the
release of her breath whenever The Woman said something that my friend would
have said if she had been able to voice her feelings.

The actress playing The Woman, Golshifteh Farahani, should
walk on roads paved with Oscars. But
whether or not her performance is recognized is beside the point. This is a great film, that, for all its
message content, avoids the puerile and tendentious. It doesn't preach and it never bores. It is a suspense tale.
Will The Husband return to consciousness? Does he hear his wife?
Will he kill her before she kills him?

As The Woman's aunt says, "Those who don't know how to make love make war."

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